Month: October 2016

One of the leading ways that people make money online is through Affiliate Marketing. Essentially, if you have a product or service that you would like to promote, you can pay me a portion of your proceeds in exchange for me advertising for you. This happens all over the world with ecommerce, books, courses and more.

For example, if you go to Amazon through my links, Amazon will pay me about 4% of the purchase at no additional cost to you simply for encouraging you to buy something from their site. My commission comes directly out of their profits.

In my blog posts, I will often link to books or tools that I’ve found useful. When you click that link and buy it, I get 4%. Here’s the fun part: if you buy anything else while you’re there, I still get 4%. It’s a literal thank-you from Amazon for sending them business.

That’s right, I can get sales credit for your purchases, and like I said, it doesn’t cost you a penny extra.

Tons of websites have affiliate programs; signing up for them is usually pretty simple. For example, I’d love to sign up as an affiliate for certain health supplement companies I’m currently enjoying. However, I don’t exactly have a ton of readership, so right now Amazon is the only one I’m utilizing. If I add other affiliates, I will note them below.

Thanks again for reading! Your time and attention mean the world to me.

The Morning Cup of Joe is a short game, activity, or video that either gets our youth group’s adrenaline moving or their curiosity piqued… often humorously. This post details what we did this week.

I apologize if you’re reading my blog posts chronologically; you really deserve a much better introduction to our Morning Cup routine. Funny videos are prime content, although we’ve had a smattering of what-should-be-award-winning games and activities that really get the kids moving.

This is not one of our finest moments, as far as being politically correct is concerned.

It is, however, one of our most hilarious.

For this week’s Morning Cup, I took one volunteer from the audience to play a game called “What Do You Call A Person With No Arms And No Legs Who.” Yes, you read that right.

Apparently, back in the 1970’s a series of jokes started circulating about guys with no arms and no legs being good for virtually nothing since they couldn’t, well, do much. So it started out with the obvious:

What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs in the middle of the lake?

Bob!

Of course, the trend grew and went from the simple (… lying on your doorstep? Matt!) to the complex (…twin boys with no arms and no legs hanging over your window? Curt ‘n Rod!).

These jokes are funny, and I’m sorry if you are (or know) a paraplegic and take offense to these jokes. Please try to see the humor in them. Now, in executing the jokes, I switched them up a bit: since we do 3 services every Sunday, I wanted to have a little variety in our morning so not every joke made it into every set. But if you’re itching for details, here’s how it was done.

The way we played the game is as follows:

I wrote them on index cards. I… I was bored. So I started each deck of index cards with a title card, and wrote the time and date on the back. Then, the front of each card got an ellipsis and the question (such as “… trying to water ski, but miserably failing?“) and on the back of the card, I wrote as largely as reasonably possible the name/punchline (in this case, “Skip!“). I shuffled each deck up a bit just for increased variety.

Then, I took a volunteer from the audience (I asked for someone who is good with names) and gave them a handheld mic. All they had to do was read the back of the card. So I would yell out “What do you call a person with no arms and no legs who…” and then read the lined side of the index card, “is laying in the middle of a tennis court?” I then flipped the card to the back of the deck, where my volunteer would read the back of the card and yell “Annette!”

We did a solid 3-5 minutes of this every service this Sunday.

When we wrapped up, I gave the volunteer the deck of cards so they can go home and torment their friends and family with these jokes. As they sat down, I yelled out to our video tech, Joey Miller: “Hey Joey! What do you call FIVE GUYS with no arms and no legs in the middle of the ocean WITH a woman named Ann?”

Of course, the punch line is “Bob Bob Bob, Bob Bob ‘n Ann” so at this point, he fired up a music video of the popular Beach Boys song, “Barbara Ann,” over which I had laid a subtitle with the punchline. Some kids argued that they weren’t singing “Bob ‘n Ann” they were singing “Bob or Ann” and I told them that they were REALLY CLOSE and in my head silently judged them because COME ON THAT’S A FUNNY JOKE, HOW COULD YOU MISS IT?! But whatever.

In case you’re interested in doing your own version of this sometime, here are the resources I used. Just be careful, not every single joke is G-rated. PG-13, definitely, I think. Who decides these things, anyway? Anyway, here: